Europe’s largest lender, HSBC, is imposing a hiring and pay freeze across the bank globally in 2016, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.<\/strong><\/p>\n An email was sent to staff on Friday detailing the latest cost-saving measures, according to the sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n Like numerous other global banks, HSBC is in the midst of a cost-cutting drive to boost profitability and returns to shareholders, and is pushing through with plans for annual cost savings of up to $5 billion by 2017.<\/p>\n Europe’s biggest bank said in June that it planned to slash nearly one in five jobs and shrink its investment bank by a third in response to sluggish economic growth and tighter global regulation of bank balance sheet risk.<\/p>\n “As flagged in our Investor Update we have targeted significant cost reductions by the end of 2017,” a spokeswoman for HSBC told Reuters, confirming the content of the staff email.<\/p>\n In October, contractors at its investment banking division in London had their pay cut by 10 percent in line with the bank’s efforts to rein in costs, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters at the time.<\/p>\n News of the pay and hiring freeze follows a significant week for HSBC, after its board met last week to consider moving headquarters to Hong Kong and to focus on the bank’s strategy.<\/p>\n A decision on the domicile issue could come early next week, a senior source at the bank told Reuters on Jan. 27.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" HSBC to freeze salaries, hiring in \u00a02016 in battle to cut costs – Europe’s largest lender, HSBC, is imposing a hiring and pay freeze across the bank globally in 2016, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. An email was sent to staff on Friday detailing the latest cost-saving measures, according to the sources …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":47066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-te-public"],"yoast_head":"\n